Change in commenting

Just a little change: when you leave a comment, your email won’t show anymore. If you are a blogging narcissist like me, your URL will still show, but not your email. In the battle against spam, I may one day need to require an email address and/or “being logged in” for commenting, but even then it will not be visible. Spammers are evil; they shan’t acquire your email address from me.

I use captchas – that’s to protect the blog from spam. It works most of the time and you’ll see it if you try to comment while logged out. Removing the email addresses from “Posted by” is to protect commenters from receiving spam by email.

I hate captchas…I know things like this are a necessary evil sometimes but I still hate them, although some are ickier than others. Your captcha is not bad. The blogger ones, however, suck.

Right on. And it’s even worse for visually-handicapped readers.

It’s actually a fairly tough problem for an automated system to tell human from machine, and even tougher now that there are spam-comment farms in 3’d world countries. Personally, I think a good start would be forcing spammers to clean large public buildings with a toothbrush.

So far it hasn’t been a huge problem on this blog but super-popular blogs like SEB get a lot of it. Les runs every anti-spam plugin known to man and still got several of them today.

Other approaches include simple logic puzzles, like completing a word by adding one letter. All are annoying.

If you have an account here, and you’re logged in, you won’t have to see a captcha. The accounts only exist for easier commenting for “members”. :coolsmile:

Yes it is, which is why the US should transition to IPv6 – for better address accountability. SMTP could use some tweaking too. Computers need to become more secure so they don’t become platforms for netbots. And some kind of micropayment solution needs to be developed so it costs a penny to send an email.

The most logical use of the micropenny would be to defray the cost of internet infrastructure, but the most likely outcome would be that it would all be used up in wrangling among stakeholders. The important thing is it shouldn’t be free to send email. Anything free will be abused, that is basic economics.

Like free speech (speak only if you can pay)? Like breathable air? I fully expect that we will need to pay for it shortly. I was reading recently that in Somalia people were renting trees so they can get out of the sun. Ahh, the market at it’s most efficient.

I’ve heard that micropenny idea from Bill Gates. I think it will curtail innovation to tax the infrastructure for the benefit of currently established agents; as it is, I consider Windows and office software, a sort of infrastructure, non-governmental tax that is government enforced.

I recall when Bill Gates tried to kill SMTP and TCP/IP in favor of NetBEUI and the small isolated islands of networking from the late 80s and early 90s. Fortunately, the UNIX hobbyists proceeded despite being told that they didn’t understand the market forces and the economics of it. Sometimes commies like Richard Stallman and Eric Allman get their day in the sun.

SPAM can be controlled, but there’s no will to ferret it out because regulatory obstructionists are well funded.

Free speech is certainly being abused, but I am willing to let that abuse continue because the alternative is rather unpalatable to say the least. Breathable air is being abused and pollution credit markets seem to be one approach for attaching a cost for industrial-scale use of that commons resource.

You’re probably right about a payment scheme interfering with innovation – true of any large-scale control. That certainly is a drawback and one to be avoided if possible (a big if).

Here’s a really discussion of the difficulties in controlling spam: A plan for spam. Really got me thinking.

Thanks for the link, dof. Most thought-provoking. One factor that was not discussed, however, was the fact that in order for this anti-spam software to succeed, it must be installed. Might it not be the case that those most likely to respond to spam are also those least likely to install anti-spam software?

If this is the case, then although those of us with the software will have easier lives, the spammers will not be discouraged or restricted in any way. But maybe that’s okay, even if it means that our dreams of toothbrush-wielding public-building cleaning spammers have to remain dreams. We’ll just have to be content with letting the Programmer sort the sheep from the spammers.